Jonah 3 · The Ninevites Repent

1The word of GOD came to Jonah a second time:

2“Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it what I tell you.”

3Jonah went at once to Nineveh in accordance with GOD’s command.Nineveh was an enormously large city a three days’ walk across.

4Jonah started out and made his way into the city the distance of one day’s walk, and proclaimed: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

5The people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast, and great and small alike put on sackcloth.

6When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

7And he had the word cried through Nineveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal—of flock or herd—shall taste anything! They shall not graze, and they shall not drink water!

8They shall be covered with sackcloth—human and animal—and shall cry mightily to God. Let everyone turn back from their own evil ways and from the injustice of which they are guilty.

9Who knows but that God may turn and relent? [God] may turn back from wrathfulness, so that we do not perish.”

10God saw what they did, how they were turning back from their evil ways. And God renounced the punishment that had been planned for them, and did not carry it out.